Meet the 2000bhp road-legal dragsters

TG hitches a ride in cars that do 200mph on the strip, then hit the local petrol station to fill up on unleaded

Bad things are best done under the cover of darkness, and right now it feels like we're about to do a very bad thing indeed. Six exceptionally powerful cars, all of which have spent the day howling down the drag strip at Santa Pod in Bedfordshire, covering the quarter-mile in as little as 7.5 seconds, should be sitting silently under cover waiting to hit the strip again tomorrow morning. But they're not.

Instead, engines - some of which are beefed up to, oh, 2,000bhp or so - are revving loud enough to slam waves of air into the chests of mechanics and pit crew. The last two drivers climb in behind the wheels of their cars, pull the doors shut and we're off - straight out of the gates and onto country roads lit only by headlamps and the bad moon on the rise above us.